Endless conveyors for selectively diverting conveyed material off the conveyor belt into a work station or diversion chute are well known. However, none of the prior conveyors were designed to be used primarily with tobacco containers such as bales and/or sheets, or designed in an efficient or economic manner.
Tobacco, before processing, is typically placed in one of two different types of containers, sheets and bales. Sheets are formed by placing hands of tobacco into a burlap sheet, bringing the corners of the sheet together and tying the corners together. Each sheet is approximately 4'.times.5'. Bales are formed by placing hands of tobacco into a wooden form, manually compressing the tobacco within the form and securing it with twine. Each bale is approximately 1'.times.21/2'.times.3'. While these types of containers provide a means for separating the tobacco leaves into discrete bundles, they do not fully enclose the tobacco. Thus, during subsequent handling, conveying and sorting, the tobacco leaves can break and tobacco particles can fall from the bales or sheets.
Once the tobacco sheets and bales are delivered to a processing factory, they are first sorted by grade and then moved to a rack or pallet specified for that grade.
One disadvantage of the prior art sorting conveyors is that they do not handle the fragile tobacco sheets and bales gently. Furthermore, leaves and particles of tobacco are pulled or fall out of the sheets and bales as they are conveyed, thus making the tobacco sorting process very wasteful, dusty, and messy. In addition, many of the prior art conveyors are not efficiently or economically designed to sort tobacco containers. Finally, the dust and waste resulting from the prior art conveyors slows the sorting process and is environmentally unsafe for the workers.
Examples of some prior endless conveyor systems are disclosed in the following U.S. Pat. Nos.: 3,462,000 to Bachman; 3,465,870 to Paulsen; 3,543,916 to Berk; and 4,850,471 to Annas, Sr. et al.
Thus, there exists a need to provide an improved endless conveyor system for sorting tobacco sheets and bales. This invention addresses this need in the art, along with other needs, which will become apparent to those skilled in the art once given this disclosure.